


December

by ilgaksu



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Anastasia Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 11:07:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11850306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: The secret to the Midas touch is this: you just have to be willing to get your hands dirty.In which Neil Josten is an abandoned boy in Russia with amnesia, the Minyard twins are missing persons investigators, and the Butcher of Baltimore is looking to get his heir back (Anastasia Fusion AU, but knowledge of the film isn't required).





	December

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thepalmtoptiger](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=thepalmtoptiger).



> This is a little (read: very) delayed and a little bit divergent from my original ideas for this exchange due to illness - I hope you like it anyway, and thanks for your patience!

**South Carolina, USA,** **_1926_ **

 

Andrew has had better mornings than this, but it’s not saying much. When they take the blindfold away from his eyes, he blinks the room into focus. It’s the kind of arched Art Deco windows and ostentatious red leather he’d been half-expecting ever since they bundled him into a taxi, the whole street, bread line and all, averting their eyes. Nothing says Mob like money. It’s 1926, Prohibition the gasoline in their ravenous engines. Andrew and his brother probably contributed to the state of this room in every speakeasy in every state they’ve fallen into and been chased out of. The polished marble surfaces of the little tables and the desk, blood-shiny, are practically dripping with wealth.

The Butcher of Baltimore is a more compact man than Andrew expected, his eyes so blue they read fake as his smile, which is narrow, thin-lipped. Andrew knows knives when he sees them.

“I have an opportunity for you, Mr. Minyard,” Nathan Wesninski says. “I am looking for someone. I have heard you are very adept at finding people.” His eyes are snake-cold. “You and your brother, that is.”

“We’re not taking jobs out of state right now,” Andrew tells him, thinking of Aaron. Aaron thinks Andrew never thinks of him - if only he knew.  

“It’s not out of state,” Wesninski tells him, smirking. “What’s your price?”

Andrew slowly leans forward to take the monogrammed note paper on the table, takes their pen rather than his own familiar one - no good lies in reaching for an inner pocket in front of a man like Wesninski - and writes down twice their usual rate. Pushes it back across the table. He’s aware of the guns at his back, even if they’re not visible yet. If he’s being cornered, he might as well make something out of it. It’s a magic skill for the Minyard twins by now. Like modern-day alchemists, they can turn any kind of shit into gold.

“And expenses,” Andrew adds, because why not push the envelope? Either he’ll walk out of here alive, or he won’t.

Wesninski nods at him, barely a lizard blink.

“I’ll double it,” he says. “You’ll be given the information you require on your way out. Payment is on delivery.”

 _On delivery:_ the wording’s to be expected, though. Andrew replies with, “Half up front, expenses billed.” He stays still under those eyes. “Like I said, we not taking jobs out of state right now. You’re an exception.”

“It’s funny how that’s often the case with men like you,” Wesninski says, and dismisses him. The blindfold comes back down, like the gavel in an auction. Andrew’s sold. Or whoever he’s looking for is. Sold out for four times standard rate and expenses. It’s not bad.  

The secret to the Midas touch is this: you just have to be willing to get your hands dirty.

 

*

 

“You look like shit,” Aaron says, stood on the doorstep of his new apartment. They live in the same boarding house still, whilst Aaron pours his money from their business into his savings. Still, after he married his wife a year ago he took her and moved three floors up and away from Andrew and the basement rooms they’d shared - stepping his feet out of the bad blood and ignoring how it came to his ankles.

“Time to pack your things,” Andrew tells him. “I got us a job.”

Aaron looks behind him on automatic. Ridiculous. His wife is out visiting her parents this time of a Thursday afternoon. Andrew has her schedule memorised - less difficult than you might expect given his startling memory, and less difficult for all of them. The less Katelyn newly-Minyard and Andrew see of each other, the better for everyone involved. There’s less chance of collateral that way, and ever since Aaron was told she was expecting, he’s been even more jittery than usual about her.

“It’s out of state,” Aaron surmises from the look on Andrew’s face. “I told you not to take out of state, Andrew -”

“It’s not,” Andrew tells him. It’s not a lie. “We’re not going out of state. We’re going back to the Old Country.”

 

*

 

“This is the last time, Andrew,” Aaron tells him, watching the harbour dissipate into mist. He needn’t look out at the horizon like that, like something’s hooked around his ribs, buoying him back to the shore rendered rapidly invisible. It’s still there. It’s just a matter of perspective. “I’m only doing this for Katelyn. For our baby. Don’t forget that.”

It’s a lie. Aaron’s made of the same dust Andrew is. He can’t help wanting to be more. Wealth is the easiest way to build something up in this still-new century, to make its bones strong - and Aaron is a man born starving.

Still, Andrew notices Aaron says _our_ and not _the. Our_ baby.

“If this goes South - I’m not following you out of another Louisiana, Andrew. I can’t do that again. I have -”

_A family to think of._

“I’m not like you,” Andrew says, staring out at the water. The world is grey. “I don’t forget promises.”

  


**St Petersburg, Russia.** **_One month later._ **

 

When they return to the hotel after dinner - the grandmother of the cheap basement kitchen had leaned in to pinch Aaron’s cheeks, and Andrew had watched with a mixture of grim satisfaction at this particular Angel of Death passing over his door - Nikolai is stood in the cramped reception, waiting for them.

He points at Andrew. His outstretched hand is slick with the rain that had battered St. Petersburg senseless whilst Andrew had been eating his way through poppy-seed sushki and Aaron wrote and rewrote another telegram to his wife. The dark navy of his coat is turned black and sodden with water, like a boy pulled out of the river. In the brassy electric light, Andrew can see the rain shivering off his eyelashes.

"I hope you're happy," Nikolai spits at him.

"I wouldn't go that far," Andrew replies.

"You and your -"

"Brother," Aaron says dryly. "The word you're looking for is brother."

"You've ruined my life!"

"Yes," Aaron interrupts again. "Andrew's been known to do that."

Andrew ignores him and keeps watching Nikolai. The angry twist of his mouth as he snarls is only half-harmless,  he decides.

"Don't you have some rotting little attic to go lick your wounds in?" he asks, just to watch Nikolai bristle.

"No," he retorts. "Actually, I don't. As of this afternoon, when I turned up for my shift, and -"

"At the radio factory, right?" Aaron can't seem to help himself. "You'd think you'd have learnt how to listen. And yet."

"As far as the fucking radio factory are concerned," Nikolai snaps at him, "I don't exist, I've never existed, I've never been there before in my life. My room's been given away to a new whole family, though fuck knows how they'll fit them all in there - it took me threatening to call the real Cheka to even get my things back - and it's all his fault!"

It takes Andrew a moment to catch up, but when he does, he has to bite back a laugh. _The real Cheka,_ Nikolai had said.

"They thought I was -"

Andrew’s mind flickers back to earlier that day. Having finally chased Nikolai - born Nathaniel, though whether he knew that himself was another story - down, he’d spent the last week shadowing him, only to pounce on the boy midway through his solitary, sad meal at the public canteen.

It had not gone well. He remembers chasing a fleeing Nikolai out of the canteen itself, spit drying on his cheek going cold with the wind, the coat he wore - long and leather - doing nothing to protect him from -

Ah. Andrew can’t say he hasn’t been enjoying the way people have been tripping over themselves to get out of his way here, but he hadn’t considered how it might look for some big-eyed nobody.  

"Yes, yes they did. It was like coming back from the dead, only worse, because at least when you do that, there's a grave with your name on somewhere."

There's a puddle, rapidly spreading outwards from where Nikolai stands. The tide of it is threatening Andrew's shoes; Nikolai's dignity is long since washed away, but there's only so much collateral damage Andrew will take with regards to his own person.

He looks over to the reception, where the pretty young thing that had been flinging herself all over Aaron this morning is pretending she isn't hanging on Nikolai's every curse and failing miserably. When she meets Andrew's flat gaze, she drops hers to the floor.

Andrew walks past Nikolai. Without breaking step, he says, "We're room 604. Hope you like stairs."

"Of course he will," Aaron says, following his cue and passing Nikolai. They share a look of such absolute and mutual loathing it should pickle them both alive. Unfortunately for Andrew, they both break away from it intact. "It'll give him something to suffer over. Russia does love its martyrs."

"Son of a bitch," Nikolai mutters.

"Isn't that nice," Aaron says blandly. "We agree on so much.”

 

*

 

Aaron’s half right. In the warm yellow glow of the lamps, the glint of Nikolai’s hair when wet and the reddened flush of his cheeks makes him into something out of a church alcove. _Devotional._ Andrew’s mind supplies the word whilst Nikolai stomps around their rooms. Signed off on with Wesninski’s chequebook, they’re the finest rooms the hotel has to offer, and the price comes with a shared desk, two separate bedrooms, and the mildest case of cockroaches in the house.

“Leave your clothes to dry,” Andrew says, and Nikolai looks at him, long and hard. Andrew sighs. “I have better things to do than steal your papers.” Going through them, of course, is another matter, and from the metal of Nikolai’s eyes, they both know it.

“What am I supposed to wear?”

“Yes,” Aaron asks crisply, sat at the desk, finishing his letter. “What are you suggesting he wears?” The raise of his eyebrows in Andrew’s direction is scathing. He’s so caught up on the hook of what happened in Louisiana, he’s forgotten they don’t get their money for a body gone cold. If Nikolai catches his death before they get him onto the boat, Andrew’s had to fuck about in the St. Petersburg snow for nothing.   

“I’m not wearing his hand-me-downs,” Nikolai sneers, flicking a look of contempt towards the desk.

“Of course,” Aaron replies coolly, “By all means. We’ll bury you in your factory tunic, like a good little Communist.”

“This isn’t a fucking orphanage.”

“You’re right,” Andrew says steadily, voice grinding like stone, “Because you aren’t an orphan.”

Instead of replying, Nikolai turns on his heel and storms out into the adjoining room. Perhaps that is his reply. At least it’s the same room the large copper bath had been sent up to. It’s progress.

Aaron waits for the door to slam before looking at Andrew and going, “This better not be another Louisiana.”

“The only person who’s never dropped Louisiana is you,” Andrew tells him. In his head, he hears the screech of the train, the labour of their breath as they race to catch up to it, to be carried out of town - and the pinpricks, wavering, ever fattening, of lit torches in the distance.

“I’m not the only one who can’t quit bad habits, then.”

Aaron eyes him, his face all knowing, over the letter to his wife - the one he’d married all proper in church like the God-fearing man he’s never been once. Andrew hadn’t gone, but he knows the picture of it rings all wrong in his head. He’s pulled Aaron stinking out of opium dens and brothel girls’ arms, their sweat tacky all over him: he knows Aaron like a second skin that should fit right and never has done. Not for the first time, or the last, Andrew suddenly and abruptly hates him. The feeling lances through, white-hot, and then he swallows it down.

Andrew goes to the bedroom door and knocks on it.

“I’m coming in,” he says to Nikolai through the door. “I’m getting you something to wear so if I throw you out tonight you don’t scare the receptionist shitless.”

“Am I asking too much?” Aaron’s voice is exasperated.

Andrew looks at him for a moment, silently. He doesn’t lie.

“You always are,” he replies, and steps through the door.

 

*

 

As he closes the door behind him, Nikolai turns to stare at him, moon-eyed, mouth sharp and tart and still fully dressed. It’s distracting enough, almost enough, that Andrew doesn’t notice the way Nikolai shifts his weight from foot to foot. He holds out his hand.

“You’re a bad liar,” is all he says. Nikolai rolls his eyes and drops the handful of rubles he’d taken. The coins hit Andrew’s palm, warmed through from Nikolai’s skin. “Don’t go through my things again, little thief. Or I’ll cut your hands off.”

When he looks over, Nikolai is smirking.

“Maybe you’re Russian after all,” he says.

“I’m not anything,” Andrew informs him, and goes over to his suitcase. He kneels to unlatch it, and when he hears the slap of wet clothing against floorboards, his hands pause on the buckles. He tells himself he won’t look up, but he does.

“I don’t care how they raised your in your precious St. Petersburg,” Andrew says, “Here, you’re going to pick that up.”

Nikolai, stood shirtless now, hands on his hips like he’s waiting for something, stops and glares at him instead. It takes Andrew a beat to catch up, looking at the webbing of scars across Nikolai’s torso and reading backwards into his expectant look. Andrew takes it in, dispassionate: the skin stretched too shiny and smooth in long, luxurious patches. The gravel scars, raised and rash-like, raking feverishly across the groove of Nikolai’s hip, licking around his ribs. There’s the cut of a hot iron scar across his shoulder. Andrew knows the shape if not the hiss of it. It makes the old ring of cigarette burns under his shoulder blade itch. Not sympathy, but affinity.  

“Aren’t you going to ask me what happened?” Nikolai says, after a moment of silence. It’s half challenge and half plea, from a boy with half a bag and still more baggage to spare, the weight of it crushing down on his back. Andrew can see it in the bow of his shoulders, wet and tired like he is, and Andrew doesn’t have the patience for it.

“I don’t need to,” he replies, and looks down at the suitcase.

Andrew does know, because he has a folder on Nikolai. It’s a joint project, Aaron’s careful notations and Andrew’s habit of insurance. He used to keep all of them in a box, and burnt the ones he couldn’t carry every time he jumped state lines. It was usually the ones they’d found dead, a separate cremation with Aaron staring through him, radiating disapproval. Aaron has always had a habit of hoarding his dead. He dumped the ones they’d found out of the windows of moving trains, watching them loose and lose themselves again, white birds in the night. And he kept the ones where they hadn’t found them at all. He wasn’t a sentimental man, but he abhorred the particular weight of empty space where there had been a person, and then they’d fallen out of space and time. It felt like they were outrunning him, constantly around the next corner, their laughter drifting back like mockingbirds. It was the kind of lacunae that kept him up.  

He knew the fire had happened the year Nikolai was fifteen, because it was there that he disappeared like a boy burnt out, reappearing on orphanage documents a few years later when he was sent out into the world. It was all the street gossips had talked about when Andrew asked, their eyes lighting up and the garble of their excitement slurring their consonants. There’s a word for it in German: schadenfreude. It’s a language Andrew is fluent in. Children burnt alive in their beds always makes for a good story; he’s guessing from the damage he’d already seen on Nikolai’s hands that he’d fallen mid-escape, grabbed onto a metal railing to slow down. For Andrew, the damage is mathematical: it solves one gap in Nikolai’s file, some missing history, breaks him down into solvable separate parts.

And then there’s this: Andrew does know, and it doesn’t have anything to do with Nikolai at all.

 

*

 

In the first page of Andrew’s file, his birth certificate is missing. He’s seen Aaron’s, so he knows what it should have said, the glaring sparse-set typography of _Father: unknown_. They say better the devil you know, but Andrew’s known enough like Tilda Minyard, watched them go back to dust - their mothers or their Makers - to know better. There’s a church record in Andrew’s, notice of his baptism on behalf of the orphanage; holding his head underwater to hold him above the Southern dirt sticking under his nails even then. There’s no photographs of the Minyard twins as children. Photographs are an investment. The Minyards are bastards and sons of immigrants, half-Russian, half-German, something old something borrowed something made anew. They’ve been gasping their way out of a South Carolina summer only to come full circle five years later - cooling their heels after Louisiana, and Aaron’s eyes heavy on Andrew. If Aaron’s disapproval could’ve shackled his brother to the front porch, Andrew would still be strung up there now.

 _Better the devil you know_ ; just because Andrew knows better, doesn’t mean he doesn’t fall into the same traps as everyone else. After all, Andrew was Aaron’s first missing person, and people like that kind of story. Andrew’s was himself, which people like somewhat less.

“I don’t trust him,” Aaron announces, when Andrew ducks back into the room. He’s moved from the desk to the lounge chair, the fabric streaked with the memory of damp.

“Didn’t ask you to.”

“He’s a petty thief at best,” Aaron says shortly.

“He’s a bad thief at best,” Andrew corrects him. Aaron nods, sharp in agreement. His hands are like his brother’s. They were born to be pickpockets, you can see it in their bones - but where Andrew never had anything above apathy for survival, Aaron had elevated it to an art, and reserved a particular brand of contempt for people who couldn’t keep up.

As if to punctuate, Aaron leans forward in the chair, and holds out a crumpled identity card. The cardboard is worn thin.

“He’s checked for that at least five times since we walked in here,” Andrew points out. It’s meant to be an observation, but Aaron smiles like it’s a compliment: the artist’s ego.

“No,” Aaron says, “He was checking for another one.” He smirks. “He has two.”

“So you took the least useful one,” Andrew assesses. “The one he wasn’t looking over like a mother hen.” This is why Aaron should leave Andrew to the insurance: Aaron’s good at taking, but not at knowing what to take.  

When Aaron doesn’t reply, only holds the identity card between them, dangling it, Andrew stares him out silently until Aaron sighs and throws it at Andrew. Andrew waits for it to fall to the floor, then picks it up and opens it.

When Nikolai heads back into the room ten minutes later, pinkly scrubbed and wearing Andrew’s clothes, Andrew focuses on the venom in Nikolai’s eyes as a way to steady himself. He holds up the identity card.

“Looks like you dropped this,” he murmurs. “Lucky for you, my brother was here.”

“Stop going through my life,” Nikolai spits, stomping across the room barefoot to snatch the identity card out of Andrew’s grasp. The cardboard is flimsy under the angry claw of his fingers, and the corner rips off, worn soft by the rain and age. Nikolai’s face blanks with shock for a moment, staring down at the damage, before he glares back over at him.

“Don’t look at us,” Aaron seemingly can’t resist saying. “You did that all yourself. We were keeping it safe for you.”

“Like fuck you were.”

It’s much more difficult for Andrew to take Nikolai’s snarls as anything but toothless right now. Andrew’s clothes are big on him, Andrew’s shoulders wide where Nikolai is bird-slender. He’s rolled up the sleeves, and the cuffs of the trousers, and the extra drape of fabric has shrunk him inside of it.

“So, Nikolai,” Andrew drawls. “Are you about to bring out a twin brother? Or is that a black market identity card? Dmitri is a common name.” He glances down at the identity card. He can’t see the print ( _name, date of birth, employment_ ) from this distance, clutched as the card is in Nikolai’s pale and bony hands, but his memory holds. “Although this particular Dmitri is probably dead.”

Nikolai scowls.

“I didn’t kill him.”

The denial is almost disappointing. From the Wesninski standpoint, some sign of shared blood through it spilt on the floor would help Andrew. In proving Nikolai is his father’s son, at least. So far, it's only in the eyes. 

“No, you just bought his life.”

“His papers,” Nikolai corrects.

“Isn’t it the same thing?”

It’s the same kind of trick everywhere: buy a dead man’s identity and paste your own over the front. Andrew can’t even see a new line of fresh adhesive where Nikolai’s photo overlays the shadow of the old. He has to admit, it’s an impressive job. It’d fool the best.

“So,” Andrew continues, “Which name are we calling you by, little thief?”

“Neither, according to you.”

“You learn fast. Sit down. Let’s talk.” Nikolai looks back towards the door. Andrew raises his eyebrows. “Where else are you planning to go?”

“Anywhere else,” Nikolai snaps, drama like a movie star, all exaggeration. His eyes flash with spite. Then, he sits down.

They’re getting somewhere.

“Tell me your story again,” Nikolai says. “About my father.”

He seems all unwilling on the surface but only on the surface, voice convincing but for the hungry glint in his face. Orphans are all the same like that. Weak to the promise of family.

Andrew would know.


End file.
